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POPSSenator Byrd Rips McCain on Earmarks It takes ear-marks to get back our gas taxes for interstate and highways work. For some reason the federal government taxes at the pump alot but then alots and apportions money to be spent by ear-marks. This is a good example of a necessary and justifiable ear-mark. Note the republican Congresswoman Capito supported this very big ear-mark too, and West Virginians (and alot of truck lines who move freight through the state, and help pay for the interstates also through tolls) are not complaining. McCain lost all credibility on ear-marks when he supported the Bailout Bill absolutely loaded with them. Perhaps McCain's biggest hypocrisy on Earmarks is the enormous earmark spending (he supports) for Israel , instead of for Americans.
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POPSWANT TO USE IT? PAY FOR IT YOURSELF! Health care (lack of) for the impoverished takes a back seat.
AS if this "Associate Professor" (I am bowled over) does not have to namedrop a school from the city where I first went to school, CHICAGO, he drops "the University that today has added yet another Nobel Prize winner in the sciences for the US" anyway. Three million dollars? If the benefit to the "children" is so great, let the parents of Chicago, the parents of Illinois or, BEST YET, the people who attend such science events, AS I OFTEN DID AT THE AMAZING CHICAGO MUSEUM OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY pay for it. My parents took me to that museum, with the submarine and the NYC apartment sized washing machine. I think we paid, like, an ADMISSION AT THE DOOR. Last year I could not come CLOSE to paying for the Health care I was prescribed. I could not come close to affording my medication. Frankly, I could not care less about a parent actually having to pay a dollar a child to get into the museum where people suffering FAR WORSE than I am could use that money simply to LIVE AND BREATHE. T
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POPSFact Checking McCain & Obama ABC News checked claims by both presidential candidates and found that Obama did, indeed, fill his pockets through Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. McCain benefited (much less) from those funds, too. As for earmarks? Obama requested $97.4 million in pork-barrel spending...
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POPSBailout Creating a Financial Black Hole (cont.)The latest propaganda from the government and the Illuminist think tanks tells us that, treasuries are more secure than gold because they are backed by the US government and gold has a counter party risk by whoever is storing your gold as the counter party. I’ve never heard any stupider comments. The Fed has informed Bank of America to be ready for a one-week universal shutdown of the banking system, including access to checking accounts, savings accounts and credit cards. This is why you need $5,000 in small bills in your safe at home and small denomination gold and silver coins.
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POPSMcCain <3 Earmarks The Mavrick breaks his biggest campaign promise. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/2/103533/393/707/617623
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POPS"Maverick" McCain Supports Pork-Stuffed Bailout Bill McCain just contradicted his entire "reform" message. He had opportunity to lead the way, against Big Interest. But instead he supported it, under the plea of "necessity" of course. There was a radio talk show that did an excellent job on this today, but it was new to me and I could not find it on the web. The former republican (a conservative or libertarian host), complete with soundbites, ripped McCain to shreds, called him "an idiot". He could have won the election (and saved Main Street) by voting against it, and proved that he is against pork bills, against Big Interests, and a "maverick" for "reform", but did not! (If anyone knows the radio talk show and heard it, please post it in a comment. It was the best commentary on this anywhere).
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POPSSenate Passes Pork-Stuffed Bailout Bill Oink, Oink! Your Senate at work, stuffing ear-marks into the "must pass" financial bailout bill. They all lined up. This by itself should make it very tempting to reject by republicans. Yet the hypocrite McCain, as well as Obama, supports it, (and Bush would sign it), even though it will NOT FIX THE PROBLEM, BUT EXACERBATE IT (according to economists who know), and put all Americans and the federal government on the hook for the about a TRillion Dollars in new debt, transferring bad debt from Wall Street to Main Street. Even more sickening about all this is that both McCain and Obama support this balderdash. It favors Obama as he wants more government spending and government control. This however flies in the face of what McCain has been saying that he will veto earmarks and pork barrel spending. THE HOUSE SHOULD REJECT THIS. CALL THEM!
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POPS Beltway "Earmark" Business is Booming .............Pelosi Uses Panic to Pass Pork........ Year-end spending bill doubles cost of earmarks, violates President’s earmark principles; Obey says pet projects added "the old fashioned way" Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) expressed disappointment that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the focus on the financial crisis to pass billions of dollars on thousands of new earmarks included in the continuing resolution (CR), which funds the government through March of next year. The $16.1 billion for 2,627 earmarks in the CR is nearly double the cost of pet projects in the same bills from last year, and almost four times the level the President said he would except. In January, the President promised to "veto any appropriations bill Congress sends him that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half."
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POPS Thoughts on the Bailout Defeat "A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation."
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POPSJohn the #1 Drama Queen Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," McCain said he had been too busy "working on all the other stuff" to cast a vote. Asked if he would have voted against it, McCain said he would have tried to cut the "outrageous pork-barrel spending" in the bill, but "probably would have ended up voting for it." Guess it's more about the drama and grandstanding. Is this what a McBush Presidency would look like? Obama missed the vote too but then he also avoided the grandstanding.
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POPSMcCain's Earmark Distraction McCain's earmark obsession doesn't really amount to squat in the grand scheme of things. It's just that "$3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana" isn't much of a moving target -- it's easy to point out stuff like that and say that's the be-all and end-all of wasteful spending. Meanwhile, we're pouring money down a rathole in some godforsaken desert and are on the verge of handing over a $700 billion reward for failure and stupidity. Attacking one degree out of a 360 degree pie chart isn't going to do a damned thing, John. Nice try, though.
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POPSFederal Minerals Management Report: Wells Drilled 
Five of the leased wells found natural gas three decades ago August 20, 2008 Lautenberg and Menendez top 'porkers' New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez were the No. 1 and No. 2 "top porkers" cited by Citizens Against Government Waste this week for the targeted spending items they sponsored in a transportation and housing bill approved last month by the Senate Appropriations Committee. CAGW said Lautenberg sponsored $85.4 million in earmarks and Menendez $83.9 million, but that could be misleading because Lautenberg cosponsored all of Menendez's items, so you can't add the two numbers together. In other words, the total outlay to New Jersey is $85.4 million -- and $75 million of that is for one project -- a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River. CAGW didn't list the items it considered pork, and it never does. A database compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense does list the projects, however. http://njmg.typepad.com/herbjackson/2008/08/lautenberg
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POPSOCTOBER SURPRISE -- Fiscal Year of 2009 Budget!!! Legislation in a remarkably secretive process concentrated in the hands of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and David Obey Passage of the bill is complicated by the question of how much further oil exploration to permit off the U.S. coast. Democrats are seeking to attach a plan to open waters 50 miles off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to oil and natural gas development, though only if the adjacent states agree to it. Republicans and the White House want to completely lift current restrictions on coastal drilling, and President Bush' veto pen gives them the edge. Discussions on the budget are far overshadowed by the ongoing debate over a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street. But the amount of money at stake — including a $488 billion Pentagon funding bill that hasn't seen a second's worth of public debate or review — is almost as great.
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POPSWhose Iraq Predictions Have Come True? The American people deserve better. Being asked to endorse such a farce is beyond insulting. Clearly, the rosy predictions of the neoconservatives from before the war are not coming true. Far from it! With a straight face, one official estimated the TOTAL cost of reconstruction in Iraq would be just $1.7 billion. Turns out that we spend more than that in ONE WEEK. Our friends are not pitching in to cover the cost. Expenses are not being covered by oil from a grateful and liberated Iraqi people. Rather, big corporate interests are benefiting, the price of oil has more than quadrupled, and the American economy is on its knees and sinking fast. No one predicted the exact course of this war before it started. But to continue to listen to the foreign policy advice of those that were the MOST off-base will only lead to more foreign policy disasters.
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POPSSenator Jim DeMint: Should We Drill? Palin’s Image as Anti-Earmark Champion September 12th, 2008 Republican Senator Jim DeMint rushing to her defense today in a “Wall Street Journal” op-ed. The senator joins me now. DeMint defends Palin fiscal stands September 12th, 2008 Before you could say, “Lindsey Graham,” Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint zapped an op ed to The Wall Street Journal responding to criticism of the record of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Writing in today’s WSJ, the Greenville senator defended the Alaska governor fiscal record as “solid and inspiring.” “She will help (GOP presidential nominee John) McCain shut down the congressional favor factory, and she has a record to prove it. Actions mean something,” DeMint said.
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POPSTroopergate Investigator Branchflower Slapped With Two Lawsuits The Republican lawmakers’ suit, not only targeted Branchflower, but French and his Democratic colleague Sen. Kim Elton as well. “The defendants are conducting a ‘McCarthyistic’ investigation in an unlawful, biased, partial and partisan political manner in order to impact the upcoming Alaska’ general and national presidential elections,” it said. Elton is chairman of Alaska’s Legislative Council, which is overseeing Branchflower’s investigation. He is also ardently supporting Obama’s candidacy and has donated $2,000 to his presidential campaign. Monegan had attempted to include items in the Alaska state budget appropriating funds for various items within the Department of Public Safety that Governor Palin had previously vetoed,” contrary to the instructions of the Governor and contrary to the Governor’s budgetary plan, Monegan attempted to travel to Washington D.C. at state Executive Branch expense, in order to request federal funding through ‘earmarks’
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POPSWhen The Lipstick Fades Palin's earmark spending ranks HIGHER than Obama's. She's going to have to do more convincing to prove herself as a reformer.
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POPSMcCain lies on "The View" about Palin's earmarks Insists she never requested earmarks as governor. Carly Fiorina gets rebuked by Stephanopoulos for saying the same. But "Just last March, Palin wrote an op-ed in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, explaining that her 'role at the federal level is simply to submit the most well-conceived earmark requests we can.'” And she kept every dime of the Bridge to Nowhere money.
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POPSGreenspan: No McCain tax cuts without reduction McCaskill said eliminating congressional earmark spending — estimated at $17 billion annually — cannot offset McCain's proposed tax cuts. "That's a huge amount of money, but it's not even a drop in the bucket to pay for $3.5 trillion in tax cuts," she said. "So, every time he throws up earmarks and he's asked how he's going to pay for it, he knows he's being disingenuous, he knows he's not being forthcoming." Plus his leading economic adviser is Phil Gramm. Gramm flunked 3 grades in grade school and most recently created economic hardship for the company he works for by investing in subprime loans. McBush is a disaster waiting to happen.
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